Cyber attacks cost Korean companies US$72 billion last year, according to a survey released by Microsoft Korea on June 18.

The Cyber Security Threat Report, produced jointly with Frost & Sullivan, a global consulting firm, assumes that 90 percent of the damage was indirect losses, which included losses from losing customers, tarnished corporate reputations, and job losses. The report referred to this phenomenon as an “iceberg effect” where indirect losses eclipse direct losses.

This report also covered the status of Korean companies’ security awareness. Among the Korean companies which participated in the survey, 29 percent said they did not even know whether or not a cyber attack occurred. In addition, 35 percent of them said they were postponing digitalization because they were concerned about cyber attacks.

Meanwhile, according to semi-annual “Security Intelligence Report” released by Microsoft Korea, three types of cybercrime were used in combination — botnets, phishing, and ransomware.

A botnet is a method of infecting multiple PCs as zombie PCs through the internet to perform distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack), steal data and send spam. Phishing refers to deceiving users and making them make a mistake by disguising a malicious website or e-mail as a secure website or e-mail. Ransomware is a malicious code that encrypts data in your computer and demand money in exchange for a password.

“In the rapidly changing digital world, companies must make cybersecurity a top priority for their organization,” said Kim Gui-ryeon, chief security officer at Microsoft Korea.